CULT2011 Media Identities: Who we are and how we feel

This module develops critical modes of attention to the mediation of identity. On our screens and in our headphones we shape and re-shape our selves. Media do not reflect identities but play an active role in bringing them into being. This module takes up the question of 'identity politics', enhancing students' knowledge and understanding of the key identity categories that have been advanced and problematized by media scholars, such as gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, national, regional and local belonging, age, ability and disability, and so on. The module also interrogates the mediated forms which these identities take, considering the politics of looking and visual culture, the politics of hearing and auditory culture, as well as the politics of affect, emotions and embodiment. The module encourages historical as well as contemporary perspectives.